Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I'm so far behind with holiday baking this year. The last two years I did a batch of cookies every week for the eight weeks leading to Christmas. This year I haven't done any except for these & these only got done because I'm participating in the Blogger Holiday Cookie Recipe Exchange.
Lori of Fake Food Free & Adrienne of Gastroanthropology matched up food blogger from around the world to share favorite cookie recipes. I was matched with Adrienne & she shared her recipe for these Chocolate Peppermint Patties. I stuck pretty close to her original recipe except I sprinkled my cookies with cayenne pepper instead of powdered sugar for just a kiss of heat.

*Please note there are two measurements of chocolate, the first will be melted and the second is chocolate chips folded in.

METHOD

Melt chocolate and butter over a double broiler. Sift flour and baking powder together and set aside. (I did this in the microwave. It took about 4 - 5 minutes with a lot of stirring every minute or so.) Meanwhile, ribbon sugar and eggs until its thick and pale. Add salt and peppermint extract. Mix in. Fold the chocolate/butter mixture into the sugar/egg mixture. Work quickly here...the moment the warm chocolate/butter mixture hits the sugar/eggs mixture it's important to get the combined as to not "cook" the eggs. Gently fold in sifted flour and baking powder. When just combined, fold in chocolate chips. The dough will be loose. (The dough is very liquidy, I thought I had done something wrong but it will firm up in the fridge.) Cover directly with plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours, make sure nothing with strong savory smells are in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

Once chilled remove from fridge and scoop out cookies onto lined cookie sheets. Using an ice cream scoop works best. (I used the large side of a melon baller & made about 1" balls of dough. Keep the dough chilled for ease of working with.) Before they go in the oven gently press in bits of crunched up peppermint candy (the candy pieces melt while baking so only big ones really show up in the finished cookies) and then dust heavily with powdered sugar to get a crackly look for the cookies (I skipped the powdered sugar & sprinkled the cookies with a little cayenne instead for a touch of heat). I tend to use a small scoop to get 2-3 bite cookies. These take about 7-8 minutes. For a larger cookie, bake a bit longer. (I had a hard time finding the correct baking time for these. Eight minutes was too short for me & I found I needed somewhere between 10 & 14. They also needed to cool for about 10 minutes on the baking sheet before moving to a cooling rack or they really broke apart).

Makes 7 dozen cookies.

More of my notes: Using semi-sweet chocolate made for a very sweet cookie & I would highly suggest using dark chocolate at least for the dough. The cayenne was a nice twist on these cookies as it gives just the slightest hint of heat. No one will guess there is chile pepper in them but the kick is great against the sweetness.

Check out Lori & Adrienne's blogs for a full recap of all the cookies.